


Criminally Artistic

by Turtle of the Abyss (ForestFreak)



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: A few characters taken from tumblr, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst, Character Death, Gen, Inspired By Tumblr, Minor Original Character(s), Rebellion, Tags May Change, Temporary Character Death, sympathetic deceit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-21 12:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14915480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForestFreak/pseuds/Turtle%20of%20the%20Abyss
Summary: The day that the New Laws were implemented was a day that they would always remember. They were awful, human rights violating, and just plain terrible. To sum them up, they disallowed creativity and self expression. Well, Thomas and the sides of his personality refused to stand for this. After all, when your creativity took the form of a physical being, disallowing it entirely was a potentially dangerous thing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Pride, Greed, and Lust belong to 5am-the-foxing-hour on tumblr. For those of you who are already familiar with their blog, you may know me as the turtle anon. Since it's me, this will probably get very angsty.

Thomas stared up at the sky, wondering, not for the first time, how it had come to this. The implementation of what the masses referred to as the New Laws, even though they had been in place for three years now. Officially, it was called the Citizen Reformation Act, but only government officials and policemen actually called it that. The government refused to give a statement on why these laws existed, but everyone already knew. It was to control the people, stop them from being individuals. People could be influenced easier if they didn’t think for themselves after all.

He missed his YouTube career, the people he got to interact with online. Social media wasn’t a thing anymore, so all of the people he knew exclusively online were outside his reach. Communication and travel with countries that didn’t support the New Laws was also illegal. Probably to keep the people from remembering that this wasn’t right.

Thomas’s train of though was broken by the familiar sound of one of the Sides rising up.

“Hey Patton, how are you?” Thomas said quietly, as he glanced around, ensuring that they were alone.

“I’m good I guess. I’m just feeling a bit sentimental. Things are so different now.” The moral side replied, pulling at the sleeve of Thomas’s government mandated uniform. “I miss the days where we could be ourselves, and the government actually cared. Well, at least cared more than they do now.”

Thomas sighed, his eyes falling closed. If Patton was thinking about the old days, then it was no wonder that that was where his mind was leading him. All of them did sometimes. It was easier to just forget though. Knowing what life had been made conforming to the New Laws much more difficult.

Of all of them, Roman was definitely the one affected the worst. The laws worked in direct suppression of creativity, and Roman was the embodiment of his creativity. The princely side left his room much less, and when he did he rarely spoke.

Thomas did what he could to help Roman, styling his hair in fun ways, and being as creative as he could at work without drawing attention to it. Simple things, like using different fonts on reports, or rearranging his desk in a new way. At home, he learned to cook so that he could have fun experimenting with new recipes and making his own up. Anything he could think of to help Roman.  
But, no matter what he did, he could never get Roman to act as he had three years ago. When he did see the side, it was always because Thomas or one of the other sides had summoned him, never because he had shown up on his own.

These days, He relied on Logan and Deceit to get him through everything. Logan’s cold logic and ability to shun his emotions helped him keep his head down, safe from the so called ‘random’ inspections. They weren’t random. Every time somebody did something that made them stand out, even something as simple as skipping to work rather than walking normally they ended up being inspected within the week. The government wasn’t taking any risks with potential contraband.

Deceit, he had found, was actually much nicer than he had initially thought, once you got passed his inverted speech patterns at least. Deceit let him lie to himself about his situation. Let him think that things could be worse. If it wasn’t for Deceit, Thomas would rarely be positive anymore

Even Patton had given up a year in. Even he couldn’t put a positive spin on things after the public executions had started. People who were caught with contraband were jailed the first time. If it happened again, they were killed. If they distributed or produced contraband, they were killed on the first offence.

Thomas reopened his eyes and looked back at the sky, glancing at Patton, who seemed to have fallen asleep. The world was very different now, and although he didn’t like it, what other option was there?


	2. Chapter 2

After Thomas got home he went over to the spot in his living room that he usually spoke to the sides from. It looked very different from how it did three years before. All the art was gone, and all of the furniture was replaced with the plain gray stuff that was standard issue nowadays.

Whenever he stood there, ready to call up the sides, he couldn’t help but smile sadly as he remembered his days making videos. The New Laws had been implemented before he even knew all of the sides. Since the laws were put in place, the other three parts of him had revealed themselves. They were Greed, Pride, and Lust. They were all what Roman would refer to as Darksides, but they weren’t all that bad.

He called upon all eight of the sides, although Roman didn’t appear. Thomas sighed. It was one of those days. He could force the creative side to appear, but Thomas had learned over the years that if Roman didn’t show up, it was because he didn’t have the strength to do so.

The past three years had been hard on him, and the fact that Thomas couldn’t indulge in Roman’s trait weakened him. That was why it was so important that Thomas was as creative as he could be in the face of the New Laws. Thomas feared the day that it wasn’t enough.

After greeting each of the sides, they began brainstorming ways in which they could help Roman regain his strength. They did this whenever Roman was unable to leave his room.

Patton suggested a few new recipes, while Logan came up with various puzzles. Deceit shared some of the riddles he had come up with and Lust came up with a… different form of distraction, which Patton immediately scolded them for. Greed pulled a few board games from his pile of random objects he had gathered, and Virgil took out the one Disney movie that they had managed to hide during the initial raids. They’d be imprisoned if they were caught with it, but keeping Roman strong was more important.

Finally, Pride opened a bag and removed a small cloth pouch that contained the last bit of his rainbow glitter. Before the New Laws, he would send rainbow glitterbombs to the other sides, and now three years later he was willing to sacrifice the very last of it to help his friend. The others looked at him, knowing what he was giving up. Pride had guarded that pouch of glitter fiercely since the laws were implemented, and now it would finally be used.

* * *

Venturing into Roman’s room, the sides froze upon seeing Roman. Lying asleep on his bed, paler than they had ever seen him, and barely moving.

Logan rushed to the prince’s bedside to check his vitals, and breathed a sigh of relief that they hadn’t lost him. The seven of them then exchanged worried glances, knowing that Roman wasn’t going to last long without immediate help.

Waking him up, and insuring he ingested a lot of fluids, they began to use their individual methods of cheering up their princely friend.

Roman went along with the games, and was noticeably affected by them. He went from barely responsive while watching the movie, to legitimately laughing with them as they battled their way through Greed’s board games. When Pride threw the glitter in the air, Roman’s eyes lit up, before moving to hug the orange side, knowing what the glitter had meant to him.

If there was one good thing that had come from the New Laws, the sides were now closer than ever. Whereas before Deceit was unaccepted, and the other three didn’t even interact with each other in any friendly capacity, all eight now looked out for each other and did their best to bring out the best in each other. No matter how bad things got, as long as they had each other, they could get through anything.


	3. Chapter 3

Virgil sat alone on a couch in the mindscape. It had been a few days since they had gotten together to cheer up Roman, and they had all visited him plenty of times since. He had seemed a bit better over the past few days, like he always did after they got him out of a particularly bad spot. Virgil knew it wouldn’t last, but it was good to see the prince smiling.

Virgil was glad that he had the other sides there to support him. He wouldn’t have made it this long without them. With the way things were now, he was much more stressed much more consistently. He was always aware of how much trouble they would be in if anyone found the old Disney movie he had managed to save from the purges, as well as what would happen if the government found out about the fact that the sides existed.

Sure, they had been all over the internet, but people thought that they were fictional. Thomas had been good at hiding that truth from the world, helped of course, by the fact that the idea that they could exist seemed impossible to the world.

If the government were to find out that Thomas was able to project his personality into other beings with their own sentience, there was no telling what they would do; especially to Roman. Roman was creativity, the exact thing that the government was trying to destroy.

Virgil snorted softly at that thought. They had already practically succeeded. Roman was a shell of the man from three years before.

It was strange to think about, how even though Thomas’s creative spirit couldn’t be destroyed completely, Roman could Fade. Just, stop existing.

Sides were manifestations of a person’s strongest traits. Not every trait was dominant enough to become a side. That’s why there was no side personifying, for example, jealousy. Thomas was still capable of getting jealous, but it wasn’t a strong enough part of him to have a side representing it.

If Thomas’s creativity kept being suppressed as it had been, Roman would Fade entirely and reintegrate with Thomas’s mind. His consciousness and physical form would be gone, despite his trait still existing in some capacity.

Faded sides could come back, but it was extremely rare. Someone can’t just choose to bring back a part of themselves that they’ve been suppressing for so long it becomes internalized, just as they often can’t choose to stop experiencing a trait.

Virgil had found out the latter fact the hard way. When he had ducked out, he hadn’t just stopped doing his job, he had tried to Fade. Fortunately, a side can’t fade by choice. It all depended on the actions of the host.

It was funny how something that he had once wanted for himself now terrified him to associate with someone else. If Roman Faded… he wouldn’t be able to cope. He could barely even cope with the stuff he dealt with on a daily basis anymore.

One of his main coping methods had been to blast music from his headphones so loud that he couldn’t think about what was bothering him. Not good for his ears, but it worked. But now that music had been outlawed, he couldn’t do that anymore. He had of course; come up with other strategies to cope since then, but nothing was quite as effective. 

At least he had the other sides. They kept him grounded. Logan could give him solutions or distract him with random facts. Patton would hug him and comfort him and give him someone to vent to or cry on until he felt better. Deceit would tell him what he needed to hear to feel better, even if it wasn’t actually true. Greed would pull something ridiculous out of his hoard, leaving him too busy questioning where he had gotten whatever it was that time to worry about his problems. When Roman was strong enough to talk, he would tell long, engaging stories filled with vivid imagery. Pride would spar with him; let him vent his anger by fighting someone without risk of hurting them. And Lust? The two of them would exchange dirty jokes until they were laughing too hard to breath.

Virgil was pulled from his thoughts by Patton.

“Hey Virgil, did you knock on my door earlier? Somebody knocked but there was nobody there when I answered. I’ve already asked everyone but you and Roman.” Patton asked.

“Wasn’t me. It must have been Roman. It’s good to know he’s left his room. He hasn’t done that in months.” Virgil replied.

“Alright, I’ll go talk to him then, see you later Virgil.” Patton smiled, as he bounced off to find the prince.

Yes, Virgil thought, he truly loved his family.


	4. Chapter 4

Patton knocked on Roman’s door, more so as courtesy than anything else. Because Roman had been so weak over the past few years, the sides typically had to enter the prince’s room regardless of permission, just to ensure that he was alright.

Opening the door, Patton was surprised to see it empty, the bed in complete disarray. Looking around the room, Patton saw that many things had been knocked over since he was last there, as if someone had left in a hurry, with no regard towards making a mess.

Carefully looking through the room for any sign of why Roman would have left it so messy, all the while picking things up off the ground and returning them to their rightful places, he found Roman’s water glass, broken on the ground, water everywhere. Roman had clearly dropped it, and recently too, as the bedsheets were still damp from the splash of water.

After picking up the shards, Patton left the room. He threw them out and then began searching the mindscape for Roman, knowing that, with how weak Roman was, he could not have gotten very far.

* * *

Patton had begun to get seriously worried. He had been looking for Roman for hours now and there was still no sign of him. He had gotten the other six sides to help him look, but so far nobody had seen him. 

Patton was determined to keep a positive outlook. Just because they hadn’t found him, didn’t mean they wouldn’t. The others weren’t so optimistic.  
Virgil had lost hope first, and the others were soon to follow. They had begun fearing the worst: that Roman may have Faded. 

That was when they felt it. The mindscape was shifting. Shifting in a way that they had only ever felt when it was creating a room for the formation of a new side. But this time, something was different. Something was wrong.

The sides all ran to the hallway where each of the lightside’s doors stood, praying that they were wrong.

They arrived just in time to see Roman’s door sink into the wall and vanish, as if nothing had ever been there in the first place. No longer could they deny the truth.

Roman was gone.

Patton fell to his knees, a broken sob leaving his mouth, as tears began to fall. Logan stared in frozen shock, unable to process what he had just seen. Deceit backed away, muttering over and over that no, this wasn’t real. Virgil slumped against the wall, a single word escaping his lips; a whispered “No.”. Lust ran to where the door should have been, pounding on the empty wall, begging for the door to reappear. Greed stood in silence, shaking with quiet tears running down his face, and Pride covered his mouth, hiding his cries, while pain showed clearly in his eyes.

* * *

They stayed by where the door should have been for hours, unable to accept what had happened. They were all in denial, and all filled with grief. Eventually, Logan was able to force words to leave his mouth. A single phrase, drawn out by how badly his voice was shaking: “Someone has to tell Thomas.”

Looking into each other’s broken, tear filled eyes; one by one they left the mindscape, to inform their host of the tragedy that had occurred.


	5. Chapter 5

Thomas didn’t know why, but something felt different. Like something was missing. He didn’t know why or what it was, but he didn’t like it. It was like an itch under his skin, constant, and irritating. He couldn’t do anything about it either, because he didn’t know what the issue was.

That was when the sides appeared, rising up or appearing based on their alignment, Roman not among them. Not that that was any cause for concern, Roman was hardly ever outside the mindscape anymore. What was a cause for concern however, was the fact that all seven of the other sides had visibly been crying.

“Hey, what’s wrong? What happened?” Thomas asked, suddenly very much aware of the fact that whatever had been bothering him was definitely more serious than he had thought.

“Roman’s gone.” Patton said; voice barely more than a whisper, breaking into what was clearly not the first round of tears.

“Gone? What do you mean ‘gone’?” Thomas replied, now incredibly uneasy.

“Gone as in he Faded; he doesn’t exist anymore. Even his room is gone.” Logan spoke with a shaky voice, much more emotional than Thomas was used to.

Thomas stood is silence, shocked at the revelation. Technically speaking, a part of him had just died, and he hadn’t even noticed. He had known that Roman had fallen ill because of the New Laws, but the sides had never told him that the creative side could actually die as a result.

Thomas opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t form any words. What could he even say? Slowly, he moved to sit on the couch. It wasn’t until a tear fell on the back of his hand that he noticed that he had started to cry.

* * *

Eventually, Thomas was able to drag himself off the couch. Like it or not, he had places to be, and the rest of the world wouldn’t accept ‘My sentient sense of creativity died today’ as reason to get off of work. 

Ensuring that his uniform was properly done up, he began the long walk there. Just before he left the building though, he lifted up a loose floorboard by the door, taking out the small, dingy crown that Roman had left behind the final time he had left the mindscape. Sure getting caught with it would get him thrown in jail, but at that moment all he cared about was having something belonging to his lost side with him. He put it in his bag, and continued on his way.

He used the time he spent walking to reflect on what had happened, as well as tried to figure out what to do.

Thomas sighed, he hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye. According to the sides, neither did they.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice while walking down a shortcut through a relatively shady alleyway that a rather short man who looked to be in his early fifties was running in the opposite direction, constantly looking behind him, with a large black duffel bag over his shoulder. At least, he didn’t notice until the man crashed into him, sending both men crashing to the ground.  
Both of their bags fell from their grasp, contents spilling all over the alleyway. The man’s eyes locked onto the crown, and then moved to look at Thomas.

Thomas however, was preoccupied with the dozens of cans of spray paint that had come rolling out of the man’s duffel bag to care that he had seen the crown.

The man spoke, in a panicked voice; “You keep quiet about the paint, I keep quiet about the crown. Please kid, they’ll kill me if they find out about this, don’t think I won’t drag you down with me.”

Looking up at him, Thomas asked, still stunned, who the man was, assuring him that he wouldn’t report him.

The man glanced around, taking one last look at the crown before deciding that he may as well tell the younger man.

“Names aren’t important; all they do is hand the government a trail to trace back to you. Just call me Spark. What are you doing here anyways? Hardly the safest place to hang around and you don’t exactly look like someone to look for trouble. Well, except for that.” The man, now called Spark, said, beckoning to the crown.

“It belonged to a friend.” Thomas mumbled, looking away from the man’s gaze.

Spark’s eyes softened at that. Everyone had lost someone to the governments iron rule.

“What’s with all the spray paint anyways?” Thomas asked.

Spark tensed again, before sighing. “If I tell you this, you have to promise to keep your mouth shut. If you get us caught, my buddies and I will hunt you down.”

After Thomas nodded, Spark gave one final sweep of the area, looking for anyone who could potentially see.

“Well kid, you ever hear of the Rebellion?”


End file.
